Twisted Lullaby
by Serpentseeker
Summary: Naruto owes Kyuubi more than he knows.
1. Life

Disclaimer: Don't own these characters, never will.

A/N: I made Kyuubi sexless/gender ambiguous both because I've seen convincing arguments for both genders and I think the concept of demons being sexless is interesting and plausible.

xxxXxxx

If it weren't for Kyuubi, Naruto would be dead long before he even began to live.

Naruto thinks he knows about all the times Kyuubi has saved his life. Every time he looks down at himself he can see the scars of would-be fatal wounds that healed at a speed to fast to kill. He can put memories to all of them - weapon and age and perpetrator. Sometimes, at his most morbid (usually in the early hours of the morning, after tossing and turning sleeplessly for _hours_) he touches the scars and remembers. For its part, Kyuubi doesn't let him forget. It rants and raves about Naruto and his stupidity, about how reckless he is and every time Naruto tries to distract it by jokingly saying how nice it is of Kyuubi to care.

Kyuubi's default response is to inform Naruto that a dead host is a useless host and the exchange ends there.

There's one incident, though, where Naruto was too young to remember and that left no scar.

Naruto was a baby, nearly a year old if Kyuubi's perception of time was correct (it will never understand the humans' obsession with time), and in the care of a rotating group of carers, and it uses the term loosely.

One carer was bathing Naruto, only just holding his head above the water level. Kyuubi had been on the edge already, unsettled both by the water and the way the woman looked down at them. There was the contempt and disgust it had come to expect but there also something else, something that it was still puzzling over when the carer's hands left its host's body and Naruto slipped beneath the water.

There had a been a suspended moment where Kyuubi hadn't known what has happening or what to do; then its host's body gently came to rest on the bottom of the bath and Kyuubi began to panic. It could feel everything the host body could - the water engulfing it and slow burn of not being able to _breathe_. It could practically feel things slowly shut down; one by one the senses left it. No longer could it hear the reassuring thump-thump of the strong heart, nor could he feel the rush of blood. And finally, most cruelly, the infant mind - _so busy, buzzing with life and information and so close to becoming truly interesting _- slipped away.

Panic slipped into something even stronger. With impotent rage it screamed its fury to the echoing hallways. And as the echoes faded a new sound replaced them.

The sound of paper shredding, as the seal ripped in half and fluttered slowly to the ground. The gates to Kyuubi's cage swung open.

It wasted no time, springing through with its lips curled into a triumphant snarl.

Above the water the carer was watching with dull interest as the small body stopped moving. _That was for you, Mother_, she thought, triumph and grief intertwined so tightly that she couldn't breathe for a moment. Then it passed and she took a deep breath, only for it to stick in her throat.

The demonchild's eyes were open.

They were red.

The carer stumbled to her feet and staggered away but she was transfixed as the infant began to claw - _literally claw, _the soft, tiny fingernails had lengthened and sharpened into hard claws - its way up the slope of the tub. As the demonchild's head broke the surface it growled at her through canine teeth so pronounced, they looked more like fangs. In any other situation it would have been humourous, the tiny, wet body crouched on the edge of a tub with fangs and claws.

With the flashing red eyes and red chakra it became terrifying.

The carer turned tail and fled. Hours later, when the claws and fangs and red chakra had melted away and the red eyes had bled back to blue, after the seal had repaired itself and some force had hauled Kyuubi back into its cage where it had frantically pumped its chakra through Naruto's body and healed the damage oxygen deprivation had caused, another carer came and clothed Naruto and took him back to his windowless, spartan room.

Kyuubi has never mentioned the incident to Naruto and intends never to do so. It doesn't like the reminder of how easy it is to kill its host, provided the right method is found, nor how glorious its brief moments of freedom had been and how it felt to find itself back behind bars.

Mostly, although it would never admit it, it doesn't like the reminder of how it felt to lose the feel of its host's mind. It also doesn't like to admit that it doesn't think it could handle losing that mind now, not when it is so much more interesting.


	2. Speech

It is Kyuubi who teaches him to speak.

In the beginning, Naruto is alone. As his limbs lengthen and his skull strengthens, as the fat melts away from bone and the red in his eyes melts into pure blue, he stays alone in his windowless room. Now and then, people appear - tall, cold people in bland clothing and blank features. They leave food and water and sometimes touch him to change his coverings. They do not speak except for a soft murmur. For the first few years of his life Naruto knows himself only as _demonchild_, even if the word means nothing to him.

If it weren't for Kyuubi, Naruto would be mute. He wouldn't know how to speak, how to communicate and his only expression of self would be violence. He wouldn't speak to people, wouldn't make them better. Without his words, Naruto would be nothing.

But Naruto had Kyuubi. While his body sat alone and silent in his windowless room, in his mind an infant sat by the towering bars of a cell. And every time he appeared a thick, luxurious tail (_so soft, _and today the only thing that truly calms Naruto is plush toys and the fur of animals) would unfurl through the bars and wrap around him.

In a voice, tender and smooth, like a blade wrapped in satin, Kyuubi would talk. At its most lucid it detailed death. The way you could see the moment life fled the body. The spray of blood from some areas of the body and the languid trickle from others, like a clean mountain spring. It detailed its life - the swath of destruction it had cut across the landscape. At its worst it described the sights of its last moments of freedom; the blond human falling, dead before he hit the ground. The human had _bounced _and Kyuubi still savoured the sound of bone cracking and the scream of grief from the summon. When it details the blond human its voice grows hard and it upsets the infant Naruto. Before long he is flinching at the mere mention of his father and the irony keeps Kyuubi entertained for _months_.

At its best, Kyuubi talks about freedom. It talks about a wind stirring its fur, about the roar and crackle of fire, of the way reflection of flame dances in the eyes of the few survivors. It talks about the sheer joy to be found in running - the push of paws against solid ground, the stretch and pull of muscles and the reach for more speed, _more_.

_Naruto feels most at peace at himself when he runs, even more so when he does it on all fours. He refuses to dig too deeply into that, too afraid of what he might unearth._

Before long the infant began to mimic the sounds, clumsily trying to twist his mouth into the shapes Kyuubi's muzzle makes when it talks. It's impossible to do and so Naruto improvises until the sounds coming out are the same as the ones it hears.

When Naruto is reading the scroll he stole so many years later, he has to improvise. He slots words he knows in place of those he doesn't and comes up with something that works for him that allows him to replicate himself. As it watches hundreds of its host's body fill the clearing, Kyuubi remembers the attempts at mimicry that Naruto has forgotten. The way he had spoken of death and destruction with a grin, knowing nothing more than he'd succeeded in his task.

Kyuubi remembers. _Perhaps it will tell its host someday_, it reflects and the images that spring to mind make it settle with a rumble of contentment deep in its chest.

Kyuubi's deepest disappointment (barring the seal that put it where it is and prevents it from freedom) is when the old man comes and introduces Naruto to the outside world - to _happiness _and _joy _and _a love and respect for fellow humans_.

It'd almost gotten attached to its host. Perhaps the man had done it a favour.


End file.
